Crazy Love
by acro acro
Summary: A short story about love, and life, and happily ever after - as long as ever after can be. This is a Valentine's Day gift for the lovely, prolific, and talented Dramione community. Brace yourself for the feels. No, really.


Not my characters; I'm just playing around with Rowling's little kittens, all in love and stuff.

This is a Valentine's Day gift. I created it because I love you all. I especially love Phnxgirl, krissh, trinka belle, ShayaLonnie, and Raaga-Malfoy, and a few others who's screen names I don't have memorized (I'm posting this on the sly, on the fly, instead of working. I'm so naughty). I may add to this list later. After all, how can one call it a gift to others if the others don't get named?

Crazy Love

He was standing on the edge of the roof atop St. Mungo's, counting the minutes since she'd left him, when he admitted to himself that he'd lost his mind, and his ability to function in society, and probably shouldn't live without her anymore.

Damning evidence in favor of his argument: he hadn't changed out of the clothes that she'd last seen him in, the last one's she'd touched. They were stained, filthy, and possibly reeked of foul things, but he couldn't bear to exchange them, let alone wash them. It would be like erasing the last remnants of _her_ from his world.

He tipped the ends of his shoes across the threshold of the roof's edge, and a sudden dizzying bit of terror nearly sent him toppling. He stumbled backwards for a moment, quite by accident, and shook his head to clear his thoughts. But it was no use; as soon as the vertigo cleared, he could smell her again, he could hear her gasp, and the pain stabbed through him anew. He squeezed his eyes shut tight, and gripped the lumpy, beaded clump of fabric in his hands. He brought it up to his nose and inhaled…sweetness, and that library smell, and sweat. It was her, all he had left of her in the world. It was torn apart; its contents had splattered and sprayed all over the railway channel. That gaping slash in the earth had been painted in red and shredded parchment, and the overpowering smell of many shattered potions had sent the Muggles fleeing the scene.

But he'd stayed, locked in position, frozen in time, as love and life came to a screeching halt.

And so, it was over. Love and life, and happily ever after. She'd been wearing a pretty green sweater that the Weasley matriarch had given her just the week before, over the Christmas holiday. She'd sworn it was proof of her adopted family's acceptance of him, of _them_. _Finally_. She'd been wearing another gift; the delicate opal ring that he'd slid onto her finger as she'd wept and nodded so fast he worried she'd hurt her neck.

It had been gratifying to see her so hastily and eagerly accept him, to hear her say that yes, by the gods, she'd love to be the Missus to his Mister. He'd whispered in her ear, much later that night as they panted in unison under the covers, that he couldn't wait to marry her, to call her Mrs. Malfoy in front of the world. And she'd stopped him, mid-groan and mid-trembling thrust, and told him she couldn't wait either. As a matter of fact, she didn't want to wait at all.

Which was how they'd found themselves in the London underground mid-morning on new year's eve, waiting to catch the tube that would eventually get them pointed north. They'd broken the news to their friends, and almost everyone planned and packed and agreed to meet in Oxford for an old fashioned pub crawl, before witnessing their marriage at a tiny chapel near the stroke of midnight.

She'd wanted the last thing she did that year to be becoming his wife. He couldn't agree more, and he'd been ecstatic.

And that joy, that insane, overpowering, leaping feeling that had been theirs, had been utterly torn apart in a flash.

She'd been torn apart.

Flesh and bone and _love_.

Some things weren't meant to live forever. Their bodies would wither, their lives would fade, but Draco swore, like he knew Hermione would have sworn if she had lips to say the words, that their love was eternal. Never-ending. Permanent and binding and-

Draco's sobs never seemed to stop. If he'd been able to muffle them for a moment to ease other people's discomfort at seeing a grown man so utterly wrecked by grief, he didn't know.

What he did know was in the moments that he was aware of the talk around him, he'd heard the healers and their friends muttering about mental fatigue, depression…suicide.

They were wrong. Hermione had been _happy_. She'd come to terms with their past, her past, and accepted the things she could not change. Like her parents' memories. They'd been lost, and there was no getting them back, and she'd finally let them go.

At the time he'd commiserated with her, and agreed that it was too bad that they would never get to share in her joy, never get to become the grandparents of her eventual children with Draco. Now, Draco saw the Granger's lost memories of Hermione as sheer _mercy._ She hadn't wanted them to suffer the fear and grief if she'd been lost in the war. Well now she was lost, and they were none the wiser.

His chin dropped to his chest as he shuddered in the frigid air. The bang of a door shutting somewhere in the distance reminded him that they'd be coming for him soon, searching him out to pat him on the arm, offer a handkerchief, try to slip him a sedative so that he could finally sleep. He didn't want to sleep without her. He didn't want to live without her.

His eye caught on the brown smear across his chest, knew it covered him from nearly neck to knee, and a deep loathing and revulsion swept through him.

She didn't bloody kill herself. Besides the fact that she'd been fucking happy, giddy with love and eager to marry, she'd bloody gasped, and lurched, and fell into the path of the train. She hadn't jumped. She hadn't let go of his hand; she'd been torn away.

Torn away from him, torn away from them, and now he was just torn.

His gaze was still angled down, but he re-focused on the edge of the roof, where it over-hung the six story building he stood upon.

She'd gasped and lurched and fell. And every minute that had passed – thirty-three hours, times sixty minutes, equaled just shy of two-thousand minutes without Hermione Granger, soon-to-be Malfoy, in the world. There was no happy new year. There was no future. And Draco just couldn't imagine there was any reason to live more than two-thousand minutes in a world without Hermione Granger, never-to-be Malfoy.

The shredded remnants of her beaded bag clutched in his hand, her dried blood clinging to his clothes – his wedding clothes – Draco shuffled closer to the edge. He'd never wanted this, never considered suicide, no matter what he'd gone through. She never would either. _Never_.

Would she forgive him, when they were reunited? A ghost of a smirk almost flitted across his face as his imagination immediately caught sight of his girl, hands on her hips and a scowl drawing her eyebrows together as she tore into him for throwing his life away.

" _You can do so much good in the world, Draco Malfoy_ ," she'd lectured on more than one occasion.

"So much good in the world," he muttered. Well that point was moot. There was no good in the world anymore. Nothing worth saving; not for him.

Suddenly he lurched, and gasped, hands thrown out as if to catch his balance, as he fell. Her beaded bag was flung from his reaching hand, and it fluttered delicately in the downward shifting vortex of air as Draco cut a path through the morning fog on his descent to the streets below.

He didn't scream, or curse his fate, or even call her name in prayer. He'd gasped, and then he was gone.

"Good riddance, you fucking wanker," a furious voice spat from the rooftop. A sudden flurry of movement revealed battered shoes, faded corduroy trousers, and a tattered red jumper with an R emblazoned on the front in mustard yellow.

Hate burned bright in the ginger-haired man's eyes as he wadded up the silky fabric of his best mate's cloak, and stuffed it in his trouser pocket. He stepped closer to the edge and bent slightly to look towards the ground, where he could see that the miserable thief was in fact staining the sidewalk with his bits and blood.

"I hope it hurt like hell, you bastard," the man raged. "You could have had any girl, and you stole her! She was supposed to be mine! My wife, my family! I hope you both rot in hell!" His voice broke as his grief washed over him.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. They'd been meant for each other from year one, everyone knew that.

And _he'd_ ruined everything. She'd come home from her make-up eighth year going on and on about how that great ferret Draco had changed, how he was so bloody smart, witty and talented. "And rich," Ron had groused, and Hermione'd slapped him.

They'd barely been friends by the time Christmas came, and his mum had presented her with the horrible green jumper, and the arse had knelt down in front of her, right in the sitting room of Grimmauld place in front of everyone, and offered her that sodding ring – probably didn't even buy it, just dug it out of mummy's jewelry chest – and she'd just waggled her head and cried pretty tears.

Blah, blah; cry and laugh. If that hadn't been so obvious how much Hermione loved the Malfoy wealth as she'd grabbed for that bauble – something Ron could never compete with – he may have still tried.

And he could have possibly even come up with a good career plan, tried something to _earn_ the money to gain her love, but before the week was over she'd been babbling about dashing up to Oxford to wed the bastard on new year's. She'd have been lost to him forever, and… _fuck_ , he'd been angry, but when it came down to it…when it came down to it, Ron knew he'd rather see her dead than to watch Hermione living her happily ever after with Draco fucking Malfoy.

Thank the gods Harry was so lazy about keeping his cloak hidden. Probably didn't realize it was missing. And even if Harry were to catch Ron with it, what would he say? Nothing. Harry was too wrapped up in his own grief over losing the sister he'd always wanted. He'd never put two and two together. He'd be crazy to think Ron would be capable of pushing Hermione to her death. Pushing Malfoy? Hell yes. Hermione? Not in a million years.

It was better this way. They'd all be better off. Maybe Ron would be able to find someone else to love, now that she was gone.

Pain lanced through his chest, and a couple of traitorous tears leaked out before he could stop them. Alarms had started echoing down at the street level, and Ron assumed someone had noted the corpse bleeding out across the ground. It wouldn't be long before someone official came up here looking for any clues or proof….

Right, time to go.

Ron turned and headed back to the unlocked door he'd come through to exit onto the roof. He pushed his hands into his pockets and focused on settling his features into a properly sad, yet blank, expression. He even managed to whistle a little tune – not too jaunty, mind you – as he pulled open the door and turned his attention to carefully descending the stairwell.

'Wouldn't want to have an _accident_ ,' he thought to himself, and his chuckle at his unintended wittiness echoed in the quiet gloom.

Ron pondered to himself in a moment of uncharacteristic wisdom that there was joy to be had in madness, and that things like love, and life, were imperfect, impermanent things. He could move on, and he would. He was capable of this. There was so much that he was capable of.

The End.

A/N: Right, so this happy little ray of sunshine was one of the easier tangled-up tales I could pull out of the mess of my headspace. Yeah, I know it's got ugliness aplenty, but hey, I've been listening to sappy soft rock classics lately (I dare you to ask me who/what in a review!), and I just felt the need to grieve. And make people unhappy. Did you cry? Did you curse my name for luring you in with a title that sounded like a big serving of incandescent happiness with a side of fairy sauce? Just wondering. You should review and let me know if I ruined your day. Happy Valentine's Day! acro


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